Anyone remember the Check-Row Planter/

I stumbled into a discussion on corn planters on the "Nebraska through the lens" Facebook page. (Recommended)  It triggered a memory of the check-row planters. I vaguely remember seeing a check-row corn field at about the time of my first memories. Found a neat and robust website called farmcollector.com with an extract from their magazine article from a few years ago.

Check-row planting involved a lot of work to line up hills of corn with 2 to 4 seeds per hill and spaced such that the field could be cultivated in the direction it was planted AND at a 90 degree angle to that direction. The corn was in a checkerboard pattern. There you were, planting corn for a quarter of a mile or more dropping seeds exactly next to the seeds you'd planted on the last pass and all previous passes in the field. AND you can't see where the earlier seeds are buried, but you have a trip wire triggering the planting.

A lot of work to be able to drive east and west through a field planted north and south.

http://www.farmcollector.com/implements/check-row-planting-by-the-book.aspx#axzz3ABbsGDQ9

Check-row planter. We don't see many of those any more, do we?